


Twisting

by VespidaeQueen



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 11:59:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1982172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VespidaeQueen/pseuds/VespidaeQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She walks away from home – maybe forever, she doesn't know – and on to become something that she doesn't think she wants to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twisting

**Author's Note:**

> Written all the way back in 2009, after playing Dragon Age: Origins for the first time. A missing scene set after the city elf origin story. My Tabris' first name is Kiva, and she does not have a particular good view on human men at the start of the game - especially human noblemen.

 In the days following, the wedding band is twisted so often that the skin of her finger becomes irritated and red, and she resorts to wearing her gloves at almost all times to keep from twisting, twisting, twisting the thin gold ring until it breaks the skin.

Still, she thinks, she would be wearing the gloves either way, as the road from Denerim to Ostagar is long and dangerous, and hard enough to travel as her short legs try to keep up with Duncan's much longer ones. Her armor – the armor stripped from the dead guard in the castle - stays on for most of the trip, taken off only a few times to wash.

The first few days out, before the gloves become a more or less permanent part of her attire, she picks at flecks of blood that are caught in the grooves and crevices of the armor, and she thinks: _I killed this man._

At night, she takes off the gloves to eat, and there is the sad, pathetic little ring made from scraps of gold, and it encircles her finger like a little noose, and she thinks: _I could have done something to save him_.

It as not as though she loved him, Nelaros, though she thinks that she could have. Could have, had there been the time.

Those first few days, she feels ill, like something is clutching her stomach too tight, like nothing wants to stay inside it. She manages to say her goodbyes and to leave the Alienage at Duncan's side, and she manages to make it far enough down the road that she can no longer see Denerim, and then she lurches to the side of the road and vomits into the bushes, the little food in her stomach leaving it, and then she heaves and heaves until she thinks her stomach is going to come up through her throat and break free, but it doesn't. And Duncan passes her a flask of water when she is done and she accepts it quietly, and she doesn't cry.

And she walks away from home – maybe forever, she doesn't know – and on to become something that she doesn't think she wants to be, and she thinks that maybe, _maybe_ this is her penance, for killing the arl's son sooner, for not saving her cousin. Except there was nothing else she could have done, and so she follows Duncan across Fereldan and hopes that she can be whatever it is he wants her to be. To be this 'Grey Warden' that he keeps speaking of.

Still, as they travel she shoots her mouth off at any opportunity, and she's delighted to find that it is, if not acceptable, then at least not punishable. It's a freedom that she's never had around a human before, something unexpected and wonderful, and better yet, when Duncan speaks to her it is as though _she_ is his...well, if not his equal, than something close. Not something to be used and tossed about at the whim of another, as she has so often seen in the treatment of her people by humans.

She does not wish to talk about what happened in the castle; Duncan does not ask. Yet they talk much, the weeks that they travel together, moving south and east across the land.

She makes a particularly harebrained comment one afternoon, about something or another, and she is surprised when Duncan breaks out into laughter. She stares at him until he calms.

“Am I really _that_ funny?” she asks, gloved hands on her hips. “Wow. I could go into entertainment with that; be the dancing bar wench in a tavern or something.”

Duncan shakes his head just a little bit, and his lips quirk into a bit of a smile. “Unfortunately, no; not quite that amusing. However, remind me to introduce you to Alistair when we get to Ostagar; I believe you two will get along well.”

“What, is _he_ a dancing bar wench?” she asks, and her eyes are just wide enough that she _nearly_ pulls off wide-eyed ignorance, but she's apparently far too transparent for Duncan, and he laughs at her again.

Still, when they reach Ostagar, all the fiery, lippy words just fly from her, and she manages to tone down the sarcasm that laces her voice when she meets the king – _the king_ – and then it's all she can do to keep the extreme bitterness out when she realizes that he has _no_ idea what life is like in the alienage.

But then...she should have expected that.

And she then _cannot_ keep that bitterness within her, not when he speaks to her, and _oh_ , she knows that she shouldn't speak to the king of all Fereldan like this, but she _does_.

She is so small – she is _dwarfed_ by those around her, these tall, _tall_ men in shining armor, and there are mages and templars, and the _king_ , and she feels so, _so_ small, like the tiniest of rocks in the shadow of a mountain, of a _range_ of mountains. She does not like this feeling; she _despises_ it.

But she is a Grey Warden now, or will be soon. Perhaps, in that, she will become something larger, something greater, something that these tall, great, terrible men will never be able to harm again.


End file.
